Planning each meal for an entire week can be a continuous challenge for a family, particularly when several members of the family have dietary constraints such as food allergies. Trying to take into account these restrictions, along with purchasing the right quantities of food so that one is not left with excessive leftovers or is not required to constantly make back and forth trips to the grocery store, is a daunting challenge that is faced by most families on a weekly basis.
Recently, International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation of Armonk, N.Y., has released an intelligent cooking recipe application referred to as IBM Chef Watson™. IBM Chef Watson™ searches for patterns in existing recipes and combines them with an extensive database of scientific (e.g., molecular underpinnings of flavor compounds) and cooking related information (e.g., what ingredients go into different dishes) with regard to food pairings to generate ideas for unexpected combinations of ingredients. In processing the database, IBM Chef Watson™ learns how specific cuisines favor certain ingredients and what ingredients traditionally go together, such as tomatoes and basil. The application allows a user to identify ingredients that the user wishes to include in the recipe, ingredients that the user wishes to exclude, as well as specify the meal time (breakfast, lunch, dinner), course (appetizer, main. dessert), and the like.